Lectionary Commentaries for April 10, 2022
Sunday of the Passion (Palm Sunday)

Passion Sunday is a unique moment in the worship life of the church. It is a day on which we hear not one, but two gospel texts. I will be offering reflections on the second text, the passion narrative from Luke, which takes us from the Passover meal in “a large room upstairs” to Jesus’ burial in the new tomb in the garden—one hundred and thirteen verses. This is a powerful worship service. The prayers, the gospel reading, and the hymns will all be preaching the intense message of Jesus’ final days. 

Since your sermon will probably be delivered after the reading of the passion narrative, that should be the focus of your message. Once we have heard the crowd shift their shouts from “Hosanna” to “Crucify him,” we have left the irony of the procession into Jerusalem behind. For many people in the congregation, this will be the only time that they will hear the story of Jesus celebrating that last meal with his disciples and his painful walk to the cross. Many will not be in church on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. Therefore, it is important for you to explore that gospel with them.

A savior, who is the messiah

The passion narrative is one of the few things that appears in each of the four gospels. While each gospel tells this story, for each writer there is a different goal and focus, and they understand what happened in different ways. Each is writing to a different community, just as you are preaching to a unique community. Therefore, it is important, on this day, to focus on what Luke is trying to communicate. 

In the opening of his gospel, Luke writes that he has set out to provide an “orderly account,” in order to answer the central question asked throughout the gospel, “If you are the Messiah, tell us,” (Luke 22:67). Jesus of Nazareth, the teacher and healer who has now been arrested is, as the angels declared at his birth, “a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Why has Jesus been arrested? They accuse him of declaring himself to be the Son of God, the “Messiah, a king” (Luke 23:2). When he hears these accusations, while Jesus never agrees, he also never denies these charges. 

Luke presents his readers with a moving six act drama. This is a long service. You do not need to explore every act in this, the central drama of our faith. People will be overwhelmed if you seek to talk about the final meal, the arrest, the trial, etc. 

One way to approach the narrative, exploring the message the Luke offers, is to enter into one of the acts, for example, Act V, the crucifixion. I would encourage you to review a synopsis of all four gospels and explore what is different in Luke’s telling. How does he seek to tell us that Jesus is the Messiah? There are several differences in Luke’s gospel. Jesus on the cross asks God to forgive “them,” and I think we can include ourselves (Luke 23:34). On that day, and today, we do not always know what we are doing. We always stand in need of God’s forgiveness. 

It is in Luke’s gospel that we witness the exchange between the thieves crucified with Jesus. It is one of the thieves who declares that Jesus has done nothing wrong. The innocence of Jesus is important for Luke. Pilate declares several times that he cannot see that Jesus is guilty of any of the charges. And finally, the centurion who, in Mark and Matthew’s gospels declares Jesus upon his death, the Son of God, in Luke’s gospel announces, “Certainly this man was innocent” (Luke 23:47). When the repentant thief asks Jesus to remember him, the dying man is given the news that we all long to hear, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). 

Luke wants us to know that Jesus does not feel out of control or abandoned. Unlike in Mark and Matthew’s gospels, Jesus does not cry out that he has been forsaken (Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:4).

Jesus, in Luke’s gospel, takes control at the end. The other three gospels tell us that Jesus “breathed his last” (Matthew 27:50; Mark 15:39), or “gave up his spirit” (John 19:30). Yet in Luke, from the cross, Jesus cries out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (23:46). At his baptism, Jesus had heard God declare to him, “You are my Son” (Luke 3:22). Jesus is now ready to return to the one who sent him.

The time has come

Rather than exploring one or two of the “acts” in this gospel, you might reflect upon a particular theme. Today’s gospel reading opens with an interesting announcement: “when the hour came” (Luke 22:14). Time features prominently in Luke’s gospel. After the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, we are told that the devil left “until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). That time has arrived. Luke tells us that “Satan entered into Judas” (Luke 22:3). Jesus tells the disciples that “Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat” (Luke 22:31). And from the cross, Jesus tells the thief, “Today you will be with me … ” 

How has the time come in our lives? Jesus told Peter, James, John, and tells us, “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial. This is your hour, and the power of darkness” (Luke 22:40, 53). With Passion Sunday, our Lenten journey is ending. Since Ash Wednesday we have been reflecting upon the ways that we have experienced those times of trial and given over to the power of darkness. We have given up things that draw us from the path of righteousness. On this day you may explore how the hour of temptation and passion has come for us.

Palm Sunday is an opportunity to look to the immediate future and a time of anticipation of what is coming. Luke 19 is not a haphazard scene. The lectionary passage explores Jesus’ preparation. Not only did the event of securing the animal go as planned, there was no apparent disagreement. Apparently, this event was something that others—the Jerusalem owners of the colt, for example—were expecting to occur.    

The oddity of this scene should not be lost on its listeners. The story is so ingrained in Christian tradition that readers may have lost the ability to see the strangeness of the scene. Despite headers in Bibles that claim this scene as a “triumphal entry,” Jesus summons an untested colt (19:30), trods along as people lay their cloaks on the road (19:36), and the crowd eventually breaks out in song—“Blessed is the king, who comes in the name of the Lord” (19:38)! 

The symbolic nature of the event would not be lost on its ancient audience. Any messianic figure with a large crowd and (potentially) violent intentions would attract the agents of Rome who were generally stationed nearby during the Passover festivities. But no Roman representatives appear. Rather, within the narrative, a few Pharisees—in their final appearance in Luke’s account —react negatively and beg Jesus to put a stop to the symbolic drama. 

Whatever we might think about the symbolism of this event, Jesus’ movement into Jerusalem was a statement about power. On the narrative surface, the scene appears to present a Jesus who will mimic the power of this world. Luke links this story to the previous one with the opening words: “after he had said this”. Will the “king” of Luke 19:38 mimic the king of Luke 19:27? 

In the preceding story, Jesus relays a parable of a nobleman who left behind enslaved persons to care for his business. Surrounding the parable proper—which usually attracts the attention of interpreters—is the nobleman’s journey to secure “royal power” in a faraway land (19:12). We do not learn much about the specifics of this journey except that the citizens of that land “hated him” and challenged his rule (19:14). To no avail! Not only was he granted rule over them, he wanted those “enemies” destroyed (19:27). That final verse immediately precedes the lectionary passage of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem within the Gospel of Luke only. It raises the question: what kind of “king” will Jesus be after he enters Jerusalem? 

In Roman society, triumphal processions usually followed the military (and, violent) exploits of successful generals. The “king” of Jesus’ preceding parable seems to be this kind of figure. This is Luke’s version of Jesus’ “entry into Jerusalem.” Is the preceding passage— although a parable —a scene of the (military) battle the royal king faced, only then to enter Jerusalem on his victory march? If so, does this passage leave behind the “violence” of the preceding story? 

There is also another type of “power” that the disciples of Jesus had witnessed throughout their journey with him. The NRSV refers to Jesus’ miracles as “deeds of power” (19:37). The Greek word appears more in the singular (dunamis— “power”) than in the plural (dunameis—“deeds of power”). In the Lukan narrative, Jesus arrives on the scene in the spirit and dunamis of Elijah (1:17). Jesus was filled with the Spirit’s dunamis (4:14), a dunamis which he used to cast out other spirits (4:36) and to heal (5:17—through the Lord’s dunamis); a dunamis which “came out of him” when people touched him (6:19; 8:46); a dunamis Jesus transferred to “the twelve” to exorcize demons and cure diseases (9:1). Generally, the dunamis of Jesus was to make things right in the world, to return broken bodies to physical wholeness—even if these activities were representative and symbolic—and to return disturbed minds back to emotional wholeness. What these disciples witnessed defined a “king” who attempted to restore the lives of people after violence was brought into the world. 

An impression—rightly drawn from Mark’s Gospel—was that unattached crowds witnessed this scene. Luke’s portrayal narrows this group to the “disciples” of Jesus. The NRSV’s “people” at 19:36 can be misleading since the Greek has only the plural personal pronoun (“they”) which likely implies the “disciples” from the previous verses. The NRSV rightly returns to “the whole multitude of disciples” in verse 37. This does not suggest that the crowd was as small as the “twelve,” since in Luke’s Gospel there was a larger number of disciples around Jesus (recall the “seventy” of Luke 10). Finally, only in Luke do the “Pharisees” attempt to get Jesus to “rebuke your disciples” (19:39). 

There are also other indicators in this passage that point to a wider network in the Jesus movement. Only Luke’s “Jesus” did not promise to return the colt (as in Mark/Matthew). Only Luke records the positive reaction of “owners” to Jesus’ request (compare Mark’s “those who stood there”). Would “owners” of this tied-up colt release their property without some awareness of who this kurios was, who made such a request? In Luke, the implication is that these “owners” were potentially part of the larger network of this kurios (“Lord/master”) and supported the group’s activities similar to others along the way (see also Luke 8:1-3). 

During this Passover season, what kind of Jesus will appear in Jerusalem? What kind of Jesus will the American Church proclaim in this bitter and bifurcated period in which we live? Which Jesus will we preach and live out during this Passion season? According to Luke’s narrative, Jesus came in the spirit and dunamis (“power”) of Elijah, who stood in a tradition as one prepared “to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (1:17). Yet, many broken families remain, then and now. The American family, too, is broken. In this season between Palm Sunday and Easter, may we find the proper words to proclaim the proper Jesus. Otherwise, the “stones” may have to “shout out.”

Adversity can feel like a sign, that perhaps you are going in the wrong direction, that you misunderstood your calling, that it’s time for you to throw in the towel of your current endeavors and seek a different path. Not so for the servant of Isaiah 50. Adversity only strengthens the servant’s conviction and resolve, bolstering his confidence that his efforts and perseverance will be vindicated, that he is on God’s side, doing the work with which he has been tasked.

Isaiah 50:4-9 is the third of what scholars have identified as the servant songs in the book of Isaiah. The first two songs, Isaiah 42:1-4 and Isaiah 49:1-6, focus on the mission of the servant. The last song Isaiah 52:13-53:12 reflects on the vicarious nature of the servant’s suffering. Between the expansive statements of what the servant will do and the poetic reflection on the servant’s vicarious suffering, stands this important song that introduces the notion that suffering will be part of the servant’s role in bringing about redemption. Suffering is not unanticipated. Nor is it an indication that the servant is doing something wrong, for when one confronts privilege and power with truth, there is bound to be push back. The opposition to and suffering of the servant, then, is to be expected and an indication that the servant is doing exactly what God has called the servant to do.

The repetition of the title “Lord God”, adonai yhwh, draws our attention to the main themes of this song. The first theme that emerges is that the Lord God has equipped and empowered the servant for the task to which the servant has been assigned, in this case, to sustain the weary (verse 4). God has given the servant the tongue of a teacher (verse 4) and has opened the servant’s ears (verse 5), pouring into the servant both knowledge and words. The image is one of the servant being trained, gifted, and commissioned by God to do God’s work. 

A second and perhaps more important theme emerges in verses 7 and 9 in the servant’s testimony, “the Lord God helps me”. The servant has not just been equipped and empowered for the work, but God helps the servant in accomplishing the work throughout the servant’s calling. In other words, God is committed to the work of the servant such that those who oppose the servant are, in fact, opposing God. Those who mock and spit on the servant and pull out the servant’s beard are not just attacking the servant, but attacking God.  

In light of this, the servant notes that he will not be ashamed or apologize for being a disrupter of shalom. He will not cower in the face of discomfort and rejection. Instead, the servant commits to staying true to being an ambassador for God and God’s will. This is not easy work but one that the servant can undertake with resolve because of the Lord’s help.  

It’s not clear in the text who the opposition is. Perhaps it is the Babylonians. More likely, it is those Jews who have accommodated to the values and practices of the Babylonian empire, who have accepted its lies about who and what matters in life, who have forgotten what it means to be people of God, to love God and to love others, who overlook the ways that the practices of the empire contribute to the oppression of the weak, the vulnerable, the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the immigrant. They are Jews who have made a home in exile and simply want to get on with life and enjoy the privilege and opportunities that Babylon offers them. Out of fear of losing status and privilege, these oppressors chide and insult the servant, striking and hurting the servant in an effort to get him to stand down, to fail his mission.

But this song reads like a taunt—let them come, the servant croons. Let them attack. Let them see that the servant won’t be stopped, can’t be stopped because it is not his to stop. It isn’t his mission, but God’s, and God will not be stopped. This is the reason the servant can say with certainty that he will not fail, that he will be vindicated and his mission will succeed. God is with him, going before him to lead the way, going behind him to protect him, going beneath him to sustain him, and going beside him to befriend him, giving him the strength to face all that is hard and painful in his effort to do God’s work.

A couple of applications stand out for those who are preaching this text. First, this is a fitting text to preach in the context of Jesus’ own mission. For Christians, this description of the servant points to but also interprets Jesus’ life and suffering. In so many ways, suffering was part of Jesus’ earthly existence. Jesus humbled himself, not counting equality with God something to be grasped but taking the form of a human being to live life for and with us (Phillipians 2:6-7).  

Jesus encountered significant opposition for the attention he gave to the poor, the widow, the outcast, the sinner. Insofar as Jesus lived out and embodied the kingdom of God, the Jewish leaders pushed back and sought to kill him, fearful that he might upset their uneasy alliance with Rome and diminish their own standing and power. Even so, suffering did not detract from the success of Jesus’ mission but became the means by which he accomplished it. 

Second, this text invites us to consider who we identify with in this song. Do we liken ourselves to the servant who is committed to God’s redemptive work regardless of the cost or are we opposing the kingdom of God breaking into our world today? Perhaps we are neither but rather bystanders who choose not to involve ourselves in the struggle between good and evil. As Christians who claim to love God and God’s kingdom, this text invites us to a posture of suffering for the sake of the kingdom of God, to align ourselves with God and God’s purposes, and to join with God in the work of sustaining the weary, bringing hope to the oppressed, and standing against all that diminishes the flourishing of God’s good creation.

What are the stories that you replay over and over again in your mind? What are notes that you choose to hear in your inner ears long after an event has played its tune? What are the contours of fear that rise before and beneath your feet as you travel through this life? Where is your hope when all hope seems to have faded away? 

To my ears the Psalmist poetry is asking us questions in the middle of our own existential life questions. They are questions that connect with our visceral questions. They are the ones we may not want asked or they are questions that are too close to the pain of life or too aligned with our missteps and mistakes of the past. The writer writes from a place most people have known and where many live at this moment: distress, sorrow, grief, despair, brokenness, and so on. 

The land of despair is like a shadow that doesn’t leave even when the sun is shining at midday. The place of threat can be a place that feels as if it is ever around and within and it seems there is little room for escape. The power of grief can weigh like heavy weights on shoulders unable to be removed and each footstep feels like a labored endeavor. Whatever the contours were of the writer’s experience (here the writer is ascribed as David), it is clear that he felt as if there was no escape from his present predicament and it troubled his every thought. If this was written at the time in which Absalom sought to bring down David’s throne and place himself upon it (2 Samuel 15), then we might discern something of the cause of David’s fear, anguish, and despair. 

One might join the writer’s refrains and say things like: I have no hope except in God’s mercy, love, and grace. I have no hope if God doesn’t exist. The fleeting moments of existence fly toward an abyss to be forever forgotten if there is no meaning beyond the meaning I choose to make for myself and my place in the world. If evil triumphs and wickedness has no price to pay or there is no resolution or restitution or reconciliation, then it seems all is lost. Each packet of grief, measure of mistakes, stone of sin, ounce of guilt, measure of shame gathered into a personal bag of troubles worn on shoulders can add to and increase one’s experience of despair.  

The Psalmist sings of feelings of despair, and he sings words of trust and hope in the midst of it. The echoes reverberate off the walls of our inner spaces where our own grief, despair, guilt, and shame may linger. The instructions at the outset of the Psalm, “For the Director of Music. A Psalm of David,” invite the Psalm to be sung by those who know the slopes and valleys of life. It is an invitation to sing in the middle of trouble a song that knows trouble doesn’t last in the presence of God. The Psalm writer doesn’t leave us in a desolate place to think that despair is all there is to life. Instead, the writer opens our eyes to vistas beyond the edges of our experience and invites us to hear a song that sings even in the harshest of conditions. “‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me. Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love” (Psalm 31:14-16, New International Version). 

“My times are in your hands” is a refrain I could carry anywhere. The words have only become richer and more imbued with meaning as I move closer to the end of my existence on earth. Having lived nearly 6 ½ decades, I discover each day an infused hope layered within David’s sonic tones that serve as reminders of a God who knows the span of our existence and who loves us for who we are and not what we have done or left undone. David’s song rising from the depths of despair sings of a God greater than despair and a God who will sustain us no matter what life might bring toward us or we might bring toward ourselves. 

The verses of truth latticed in human experience within this Psalm connect with people across the ages. Commentaries on Psalm 31 lift out the verses in the Bible that reprise lines from Psalm 31.¹ We discover Jonah singing the tones of trust while he languished inside the whale or big fish (Jonah 2:8). We hear them sung by Jeremiah as he underwent hardship because of speaking truth to power (Chapters 6, 20, 46, and 49). We hear the Apostle Paul opine the tones in Corinthians to encourage the young Christian congregation to remain vital and strong in the face of opposition (1 Corinthians 16:13). And we discover that Jesus himself utters words from this Psalm from the cross (Luke 23:26). 

Trust in God despite the adversity in which one finds oneself is a refrain carried through the Psalm. This trust finds echoes across the books of the Bible, within Christian Church history, and within contemporary contexts. There is something in the power of words of truth that can lift spirits and bring hope in the midst of disaster and despair. 

I know this firsthand. While I was working at Pacific Theological College, Suva, Fiji in 2000, a political coup happened. The parliament building had been overtaken by those who didn’t like the direction that the country was taking and decided it was time for a change. They took parliamentarians hostage and democracy was diminished that day. The young and old Fijian men walked past our door armed with cane knifes and zealous intent to reassert a political ideal of indigenous Fijian rule. Each day and throughout the day I heard in my mind the words, “Trust me (God) and it will be alright.” 

My family and I lived on the PTC campus about one block from the Parliament building and we could hear occasional gunfire. One day the Fijian military set up machine gun emplacements on the road leading up to the Parliament building. The rebels didn’t welcome this assertion of power and proceeded down the hill from the Parliament building toward the Fijian military who were firing their guns at the ground and in the air next to the campus to deter them. That day I called the U.S. Deputy Ambassador and he picked up my family in an armored car and brought us to his home. 

A few days later we traveled through the night through military checkpoints toward the other side of the island and eventually left the country. Throughout that experience I heard the refrain “Trust me and it will be alright.” David’s Psalm came to mind and it has been sung across the past 3,000 years with notes that touched hearts and minds with hope and courage to face whatever would come.

When the U.S. Capitol was overrun by insurrectionists on January 6, 2020, I couldn’t help but make comparisons to the Fijians who had overrun the Fijian Parliament building 20 years earlier. Zealous for a cause, rooted in an ideology, fueled by desires for a different set of definitions for what it meant to be a country, they counted themselves as the patriots. Democracy is always a breath away from being lost and yet, even if it were to be lost, the refrain remains the same. Trust me and it will be alright. David the Psalm writer was embroiled in a political landscape that threatened his very existence. Yet, even in a space of uncertainty, his words sang a song of trust in God no matter what the conditions of life might be. Even in despair the word of God breathes an eternal hope of God’s presence. 

Notes

1. See: Enduring Word Commentary https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/psalm-31/

This hymn raises questions that Christians have wrestled with for centuries: Who is this Jesus whom we call Messiah and Lord? How is he related to God, on the one hand, and to us as human beings, on the other? And, given who Jesus is, how are we, in turn, to relate to one another?¹

The passages immediately preceding this hymn set the stage for addressing these questions. There Paul urges his readers to “pay careful attention” (skopeō) not to themselves, but to others—or, better, to those who are different (heteros) from them (2:4). 

Our hymn then goes on to describe how we can, in fact, share in the Messiah’s “mind,” that is, his mode of perceiving and responding to life (2:5). It does this by way of a literary structure (called a chiasm) that presents themes and then repeats them, but in reverse order.

The messiah humbles himself

Paul draws on the figures of Adam, and probably also the personified figure of Wisdom, to play on what it means for the Messiah Jesus to share in the image of God.  He uses three different words for this—“form” (morphē) to indicate the Messiah’s equality with God (in 2:6), and “likeness” (homoiōma) and “shape” or “way of life” (schēma) to signify how he “empties” himself in human form (in 2:7).

Of course, images are inherently problematic in the Bible. Yes, we are created in God’s image and thus reflect God’s glory within our very humanity. Yet, we often misuse our God-given capacities to fabricate idols—or in more contemporary terms, socially constructed phenomena—that take on a force of their own over us, like money or mechanisms for controlling others. To describe how we do this, Paul conjures the image of something that is grasped or exploited, using a word (harpagmos) that vividly portrays how our idolatry is often intertwined with injustice. The verb form of this word (harpazō) is often in Scripture to depict how religious and political leaders greedily plunder and steal from the poor and the oppressed, even as they boast of their piety and spiritual exploits.

In contrast to all this, the Messiah Jesus shares in the human lot of others—even to the point of shamefully being put to death by religious and political authorities. Much like the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, he redefines our concept of who the Messiah is, and in so doing also redefines for us what it means to be created in God’s image. 

Paul’s hymn resonates with the Gospels’ picture of Jesus’ messianic identity—that the Messiah Jesus is not only the “Son of Man,” but also the Suffering Servant. This confession runs throughout stories of his baptism, of his being tempted to misuse wealth and power, of his prayer in the Garden before his death, and ultimately of his death itself. And, in the same way that Paul links a confession of Jesus’ identity with a call to share his “mind,” so the Gospels link such a confession with a call to share in his mode of life and death. 

However, the hymn’s point is not merely ethical—that we are to follow Jesus’ example. Rather, its point is to identify where and how we might see and reflect the divine image—and that is precisely amidst the Messiah Jesus’ union with our poverty.

God exalts the messiah

This now is why God “hyper-exalts” Jesus, giving him the name above all names (2:9-11). Specifically, God gives him the name “Lord” (kurios), which signifies not merely a ruler, or a god or transcendent being, but indeed the tetragrammaton (YHWH), the unnamable name of God in the Hebrew Bible.  

But we must not interpret this exalted name as some kind of reward for sacrifice. Jesus is not being rewarded with ultimate power for sacrificing himself, just like we are not rewarded with ultimate power—or the ultimate vindication that we are “right”—just because we sacrifice things. 

Rather, this hymn depicts what Jesus’ resurrection actually signifies. The point of the biblical witnesses to his resurrection is not that a dead body has been resuscitated, or that a human personality has now been given superhuman powers. The point rather is that in Jesus’ life and death for others, God’s reign of mercy and justice has been vindicated, and that this kind of self-giving love is indeed stronger than death. Amidst the dysfunctional relationships and worlds that we have become accustomed to—with their abusers and victims, and their distinctions between rich and poor, and powerful and weak—Jesus as Messiah brings about “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is a new way of being based on mutuality, service, and the sharing of sorrows and joys, of poverty and wealth, and of the profound link between “having nothing” and “possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:10). 

Finally, this hymn brings together two ways the Scripture renders God’s presence among the people of Israel.² If the “name” of YHWH signifies God’s presence as goodness and mercy as they sojourned through the desert, then “glory” refers to God’s descent to dwell in a sanctuary or sacred place. In this Pauline hymn, Jesus is exalted with the “name” above all names because his sojourn into self-emptying poverty is precisely where the glory of the one he called, “Abba!” is manifested (2:10-11). As in the Prologue of John (1:14), true divine glory is marked by indwelling the other—for the other’s sake. 

In our own lives, we confess and call on the exalted “name” of Jesus so that we can enact not just the example of his life, but the new way of being which his union with our vulnerable, and often corrupt, mortal lives brings about. In this way, we see and behold—in faith and hope—how God’s “glory” is becoming manifest amidst whatever is taking place within and around us.

Notes

1. Scholars debate whether this hymn was or was not written by Paul.
2. See Samuel Terrein, The Elusive Presence (New York: Harper & Row), 463.